Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
✭✭✭✭✩
by Giacomo Puccini, directed by Brian Macdonald
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
September 26-November 3, 2009
Opening the COC’s 2009-10 season is Puccini’s Madama Butterfly in the timeless production designed by Susan Benson and directed by Brian Macdonald. Though the production was first mounted in 1990, it seems brand-new and with its use of wood and muted palette of colours looks as if it were specifically created for the Four Seasons Centre. The elegant simplicity of Benson’s design, the subtlety and range of Michael Whitfield’s lighting and the dramatic rightness of Macdonald’s direction make this the most warmly satisfying production of an opera the COC has ever commissioned. Please, let’s have more from this team in future.
Any discussion of the performances must note that there are two casts of principals who alternate throughout the long run. The cast seen on opening night featured Romanian soprano Adina Nitescu as the former geisha Butterfly, David Pomeroy as her lover Pinkerton, Allyson McHardy as Butterfly’s servant Suzuki and James Westman as the U.S. Consul Sharpless, who tries to dissuade Pinkerton from a marriage Pinkerton does not regard as binding. The second cast in these roles is Yannick-Muriel Noah, Bryan Hymel, Anita Krause and Brett Polegato.
I mention this because my primary difficulty with the opening night production was the performance of Nitescu. Though she has a powerful voice, she sings with little subtlety. Butterfly is said to be only 15 years old, trained in the arts of the geisha, fragile and demure. At no time does Nitescu convey any of this. She strides about, head erect, full of overweening pride, staring people full in the face. Icy stubbornness not romantic faith perversely makes one of opera’s most beloved heroines strangely unsympathetic.
Luckily, this is not true of the others. Pomeroy is in fine voice and captures just the right mix of dashing handsomeness and utter callousness. McHardy is a warmly sympathetic Suzuki and Westman a deeply compassionate Sharpless. Under the baton of the ebullient Carlo Montanaro, the COC Orchestra made Puccini’s score utterly gorgeous, thrilling in its sweep and full of detail. Given that the design, direction and orchestra are the same for all performances, you may wish to check which cast is singing when before buying your tickets.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-09-29.
Photo: Adina Nitescu and David Pomeroy. ©Michael Cooper.
2009-09-29
Madama Butterfly